Documatic is a free, open-source, participatory, android-based, mobile shooting assistant, and pre-editor. I have created this program to lay the basic groundwork for the larger concept of "semi-automatic filmmaking" as part of my Master's Thesis in Digital Media at Georgia Tech. It is also the winner of the James Dean Young Award for Oustanding Project.

Embedded below is a short video overview describing the purpose, and functionality, goals and extensions for Documatic.

Overview

This project grew from both a desire to aid small budget and beginning filmmakers, and to bring the process of filmmaking into the digital world. Even though the advent of digital video recording devices has opened the doors to many small-scale filmmakers by greatly reducing the costs associated with capturing and manipulating moving images, the legacy production practices developed by analog filmakers persist through the medium.

The basic principles of Documatic, and Semi-Automatic Filmmaking, in general, are that, instead of gathering tons of footage with a video camera, and then later meticulously sorting and organizing in a separate editing stage, you can use an Android device to roughly annotate and organize the video clips as they are being recorded. Then later, the system combines these annotations with the raw footage and intelligently organizes and "pre-edits" the footage into an Adobe Premiere Sequence.

Participate

To make your own semi-automatic Documentary, you can learn how to use Documatic at this instructable:

The primary purpose of Documatic is to give a digital hand-up to small budget and beginning filmmakers.

The tasks of funneling massive amounts of unorganized footage and continuously vacillating between capturing footage and re-structuring the project make documentaries one of the most frustrating media in which to work. The documentarian must not only organize the deluge of information, but also sculpt an engaging, concrete structure from its often changing pieces. The unique qualities that arise from its rigorous and dynamic production process, however, also help to define documentary from other types of film.
Traditionally, they way in which the large studios dealt with the organization and structuring problems of motion pictures, was to distribute the filmmaking process into simpler tasks among dozens or hundreds of individuals.

Unfortunately, small documentary groups lack the manpower to achieve these levels of efficiency. The digital automation and or parallelization of some of these simpler tasks of the studio's production process, could, however, replace some of these gaps in manpower. In this way, small documentary productions can begin to enjoy some of the filmmaking efficiency afforded to the big filmmakers, while maintaining the artisanal quality control of a small team.

This project, Documatic, seeks to develop a system that combines the shooting/information-gathering process with editing/structural-synthesis to allow semi-automated production of concrete video stories following established documentary models. The end product will be more or less indistinguishable from a traditional, linear documentary film, but the new process leading to its creation will hopefully be simpler, more efficient, educational, and fun.

Current Field

Overall, the field of video production automation consists primarily of either products organize and label footage that is being collected, or software to automatically structure pre-annotated footage into a viewable experience. Documatic's goal is to unite the capabilities of these existing artifacts in order to form the a fully digital production experience all the way through.

Functionality

The functionality of this product is derived from the pairing of a pool of raw, unorganized data (folders of unlabeled video content) with a collection of semantic data (xml annotations of specific time-periods) via global timestamps in order to automatically generate an editable sequence in an editor such as Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro. With my system, the raw data can be collected from any digital video recording device, and the annotation data is created by the Documatic app running on an Android device. By simply synchronizing the internal clocks of the desired camcorder(s) and the Android device with the current internet time (such as nist.time.gov), no further communication is necessary to allow the devices to work together.

This means that while the filmmakers are working, there is no underlying reliance on Bluetooth or cell phone data networks to maintain consistency across the project. Nor do the filmmakers need to worry about recording or annotating with a specific device All aspects of the project are standardized by following universal time. The Documatic app places timestamps on every piece of data collected, and the video clips all contain metadata describing when each file was created.

The Project Generator module then handles the math needed to pair a specific set of video frames with the appropriate set of annotations. Finally, after this pairing, the Project Generator uses the data from the annotations to automatically arrange the clips in the video editor according to an underlying procedural model (in this case it is based upon the categorical documentary described by Bordwell and Thompson). At this point the documentarians can simply refine the pre-edited footage in the traditional fashion.

Procedural Model

The first step in any automation process is the creation of rule sets. These rules are necessary to transform any continuous real-world process, into a discrete series of tiny steps that can be completely programmatically. To design a procedural model for filmmaking, I turned to established film theorists. In their book, Film Art, Bordwell and Thompson identify a primary type of documentary film, the categorical form.

This format follows very simple, consistent pattern regardless topic. First, the subject is introduced, and then the viewer is presented with a series of interviews or narrations grouped into topics associated with the overall subject. Using this categorical model to simply arrange footage into groups based is a good start for organizing the footage. One could imagine the use if, after filming several interviews, every time the interviewees spoke about "Topic A" these sequences were automatically gathered together in one bin, and all the sequences mentioning "Topic B" were relegated to another. Automating this process alone, would already lift the burden of keeping track of many specific instances of time scattered across hours of footage.

To supply an additional reprieve for the filmmaker, I also constructed a supplementary rule-set would be helpful to aid in actually editing the footage once it has been organized. This secondary rule-set breaks down an individual section of the categorical documentary into three fundamental footage elements: Interview, Exhibit, and Narration.

The "Interview" element simply consists of video from a camera pointed at a person (typically a close-up head shot), who is describing or answering questions about something. "Exhibit" footage illustrates what the person may be describing in the video. Finally, Documatic's "Narration" elements consist of audio clips that introduce a specific section.

Thus, adding this deeper set of rules, to Bordwell's concept of a "categorical" film, results in this full rule-set that governs the output and production of a Documatic documentary:
1) A Documatic documentary consists of a series of topics (sections) about a particular subject.
2) Each section can contain pieces of interview, exhibit, or narration pertaining to its topic .
3) An interview clip can be overlaid with an exhibit segment of footage which illustrates what is being described in the interview.
4) An interview clip can be overlaid with text of footage which conveys information such as the interviewee's name.
5) A narration clip can introduce a section and be overlaid with an exhibitory segment of footage which illustrates what is being described in the narration.

Digital Documentary - Quitmeyer Master's Thesis

Examples

Here is an example documentary made with Documatic

Long Dogs

To make your own semi-automatic Documentary, you can learn how to use Documatic at this instructable:

1. an Android Device with the documatic app installed:
https://market.android.com/details?id=andy.documatic&feature=search_result

2. A digital camcorder device that saves videos as individual files, like in a cameraphone, or video from a DSLR (note, miniDv probably won't work for this)

3. A computer with Adobe Premiere (or maybe Final Cut Pro) installed.

4. Java installed
http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp

5. Xuggler installed. Because of the way the current project generator functions, you will need to quickly download and install this free software library that quickly analyzes video files:
http://www.xuggle.com/xuggler/downloads/

Other Downloads

If you would like a more thorough description of the design process and media theory, download the full design document:

I am actively seeking out programmers and designers who would like to join and develop the project of "Semi-Automatic Filmmaking." With your help we could expand beyond the simple, proof-of-concept prototype, that is "Documatic", and expand the realm of Semi-Automatic Filmmaking to create more powerful tools for proceduralized digital filmmaking.

Some simple ways in which the current, "Documatic", project could be simply extended are listed here: Simple Extension Ideas

Become a Backer

If you would like to donate money towards development, and get cool prizes in return, become at backer at our Kickstarter site:

Join the Team

If you would like to help serve as a co-developer, please contact me at: